kingrat

A Face in the Crowd seems prophetic to me: 1) entertainers as politicans, from Reagan to Al Franken, and no doubt into the future; 2) the role of advertising in politics; 3) the need for politicians to adapt to the medium of television; 4) the importance of the folksy sound-bite. Even the synthetic country song that Andy Griffith sings would fit perfectly on a radio-ready country music station today.

Hot Splice, I believe you're right. The outstanding actors put real flesh and bones on the allegory. It would be interesting to show Bad Day at Black Rock and High Noon with films like The Seventh Cross, The Mortal Storm, and Hangmen Also Die which more directly address these issues.

The next time you see MADELEINE, notice how David Lean extends the motif of Madeleine seeing Emile's legs in the window of her basement room. When they meet this way, Emile is looking down and Madeleine is looking up. There are many shots of legs and footwear in various scenes. A key scene in the film is the one where Emile at the ball looks down from the balcony at Madeleine dancing with Mr. Minnoch. Another fabulous shot shows Madeleine ascending a narrow staircase to enter the courtoom. Several men remove the floor panel and peer down at her while she looks up at them. I didn't notice any of this the first time through, but it enriched the film the second time through. Oddly enough, MADELEINE had--perhaps still has--the reputation of being one of Lean's weakest films. I don't think so at all.

Announcing new 20th Century Vole Productions! NORTH DALLAS FORTY GUNS - They're not just playing football any more THE EGG AND I WANT TO LIVE! - Vegan melodrama SHE WORE AN I AM CURIOUS YELLOW RIBBON - Swedish hussy disrupts the U.S. Cavalry IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER - Psycho Mitchum chases detective Poitier and femme fatale Gish ASHES AND DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER - 007 gives up espionage to study Polish cinema

Bad Day at Black Rock has three actors who would win Oscars for best actor (Tracy, Borgnine, Marvin) and two who won in the supporting category (Brennan, Jagger). All this and Robert Ryan, too. Not to mention good script, good direction, great cinematography, great pacing with tension throughout.

Did anyone notice that AMC's programming for Easter included that sweet family film SILENCE OF THE LAMBS? Talk about counterprogramming.

SHERLOCK JR. is one of my favorites. Amazing action scenes, excellent comedy, and very sophisticated play on how watching movies can affect our ordinary lives. People who think of silent films as old-fashioned are sometimes blown away by this film. I'm glad Buster has so many fans, here and at TCM.

This is also one of my favorites, MBFan. Can't recall if we discussed it much in the Fred Zinnemann thread.

Seems like a lot of us really enjoyed this film. Great location photography, outstanding sets, good script, good performances. Like MissGoddess, I was pleasantly surprised by George Hamilton. Seeing him in Light in the Piazza and Home from the Hill shows that once upon a time he really could act. Yvette Mimieux was right on target as Clara; this is a role that could easily be overacted and false. Mimieux is so pretty, as the part requires, and has a light touch yet shows us all the right emotions. Maybe director Guy Green deserves a shout out for making all the elements work together so well. If you haven't seen the musical/opera in PBS' Great Performances series, there are many beautiful lighting effects that do as good as job as the stage can do of presenting the effect that Italy has on the characters.

1995: Skimpole, I believe you're right to credit (or blame) the Golden Globes for Braveheart's Oscar win. It's much the weakest of the five nominated films. There's also sometimes a feeling that "it's someone's year"--let's give the award to someone who's made a lot of money for the industry. That worked in Mel Gibson's favor. Some years Apollo 13 would have won. It's one of the best films ever about how American men work in groups. However, the "Apollonian" nature of the film didn't seem as much in tune with the times as the exaggerations of Braveheart. Babe is another solid film, but the Academy wasn't ready to give the top prize to a talking pig movie.

If you're looking for an unusual film, check out LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA this Sunday at 6:00 a.m. Eastern, 9:00 a.m. Pacific. An American woman (Olivia DeHavilland) and her daughter (Yvette Mimieux) are on holiday in Italy, where the handsome son (George Hamilton) of an Italian businessman (Rossano Brazzi) falls in love with the daughter. Because of the language and cultural differences, the men don't realize that the beautiful girl has the mental capacity of an 11-year-old. What's a mother to do? Especially when the very married Rossano begins to fall for Olivia. I haven't seen the film, but the opera based on Elizabeth Spencer's novella is quite good. PBS showed it a couple of years ago.

If you're interesting in reading about the Madeleine Smith case, there's a very well-written essay by F. Tennyson Jesse in a collection of essays by various authors about famous English murder cases. Google should help turn up the name of the book. Lean stuck close to the facts of the case. Glad to know I'm not the only one who likes this movie.

Too bad that the print of Drunken Angel was so poor, since the noirish photography was very important to this movie. The other Kurosawa films I've seen--Seven Samurai, High and Low, The Bad Sleep Well, Throne of Blood, Stray Dog--have looked great. Drunken Angel needs some film lab rehab.

My point about the camera movement (one aspect of films that auteurist critics tended to notice, but by no means the only one ) is simply that auteurist critics praised it in films by "their" directors, ignored it in films by everyone else. Yes, they valued thematic repetition, but again, not in directors like Zinnemann who weren't on the approved list.

Clore, I couldn't agree more with you about auteurism. Those critics gained credibility when they praised Vertigo and The Searchers and Anthony Mann westerns, but lost it when they offered us Red Line 7000 and Skidoo as timeless masterworks. "Drink the Kool Aid" autueurists even raved about the hideous back projections in Marnie. Many of the auteurist critcs were interested in imaginative camera work, but only in the films of their faves. The stunning camera movements at the opening of Wyler's The Letter and Sidney Lumet's The Hill simply didn't count. To a surprisingly large extent, auteurism was like a political party with a list of incumbents it wanted to get rid of: Wyler, Huston, Mankiewicz, Zinnemann, Lean, among others. A reliance on the conventions of period style was held against Curtiz, LeRoy, Sam Wood, and others, but was all right for Hawks and Preminger. At this remove of time, it's easier to see the greatness of Huston's directing in THE MALTESE FALCON.

I believe Andrea Leeds made only two films, got married, and left Hollywood.

In BONNIE AND CLYDE Gene Hackman giggles as he reads in the newspaper that the Barrow Gang has been reported robbing a Piggly Wiggly store. I believe that chain of supermarkets was mainly in small towns in the South. Some people would jokingly call it the Hoggly Woggly. Lzcutter, so you were also a DARK SHADOWS fan. Jonathan Frid, Grayson Hall, Lara Parker, Kathryn Leigh Scott were all faves. So glad that Grayson Hall had that great part in NIGHT OF THE IGUANA so that more people know who she was.

Add me to the list of people who are loving the Kurosawa month. I'd join Jef's wish for an Antonioni tribute, too. Actually, TCM is doing a great job of balancing its constituencies by featuring both Kurosawa and Ginger Rogers this month.

Speaking of throwing up, I remember as a child throwing up at the theater during Cecil B. DeMille's THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. Some of us are movie critics at an early age! The best I can recall, it was during a scene where someone was tied to a post and being tortured.

You'd probably like Ikiru better, or High and Low or Rashomon or Yojimbo or Seven Samurai. They're all much more approachable. The wartime films are not well-known, maybe more for scholars than for the average classic film lover.

I happened to tune in to THE MALTESE FALCON at the big showdown scene where the falcon is sent for and discovered not to be what they thought. It had never occurred to me before that there's a long scene between Lorre, Greenstreet, Bogart, and Astor followed by the climactic scene between Bogart and Astor after Lorre and Greenstreet leave. A long time in a small set--but never dull. John Huston does such a great job with the camera set-ups that the action never feels stagy. I would probably never have noticed this if I hadn't tuned in when I did, because everything flows so naturally that we concentrate on the great acting, wonderful dialogue, and fascinating characters. THE MALTESE FALCON is either the film that made me a Bogart fan or the film that made me a BIGGER Bogart fan, and it definitely made me crazy about Mary Astor.

1981: If REDS (aka BRANGELINA GOES TO PETROGRAD) had been a big financial success, which it wasn't, the subject matter wouldn't have bothered many of the voters. Warren Beatty wasn't universally loved in Hollywood, either. REDS is also over three hours long and doesn't feel a second shorter. Because it lost, it's acquired a rosy glow in memory. Had it won, it would now be considered another beached whale. The top competitor was considered to be ON GOLDEN POND, which 1) was going to win the top acting awards anyway and 2) was only a filmed play. RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK wasn't considered a serious film. CHARIOTS OF FIRE was an entertaining movie of a reasonable length, captured the period setting better than REDS, and, like many another Oscar winner, had a memorable theme.

The high level of violence and the amorality of the hero in KISS ME DEADLY also make a direct line to POINT BLANK, just as Aldrich's western VERA CRUZ takes us directly to Sergio Leone. KISS ME DEADLY is really well directed, although the script has holes you could drive a truck through. Perhaps with a star more charismatic than Ralph Meeker, it might have made a bigger impact in its day.

Although "Berry Berry" is certainly a ridiculous name, I believe that the novel's author James Purdy wants us to remember that "beriberi" is a disease, and thus that Berry Berry brings disease to everyone around him.

Glad to see this thread. I think 12 ANGRY MEN is an even better film because of the ambiguities and the doubts some of us have concerning the Fonda character. First of all, Sidney Lumet does an amazing job of directing the film in such a confined space. If you see the movie again, look at how he breaks up the shots into small groups, close-ups, back to the whole jury, and so on. All the performances are first-rate. SPOILER ALERT: In what follows I'm going to mention some specific events in the film, including the conclusion. 12 ANGRY MEN is a great study of group dynamics and how different kinds of people assert themselves. "Angry" is an important word in the title: how do different men express their anger? Notice how much more Fonda has to do in the first half of the film. It's a chain reaction. Fonda's leadership style appeals to the older and gentler men. Once some of the quieter men, such as the oldest juror and the foreign-born juror played by George Voskovec, join Fonda, notice how much more active and aggressive they become. Fonda sets them in motion, and then they do a fair amount to persuade the others. A hung jury would result unless the combination of Lee J. Cobb and E.G. Marshall can be split. Notice that they're sitting next to each other, and Lumet sometimes shoots them as a unit. Today Cobb would be the dedicated listener of right-wing talk radio, whereas Marshall represents the temperamentally conservative white-collar guy who's more sympathetic to management than to labor. Marshall provides the intellectual leadership for the last four holdouts. Once he capitulates, Cobb is isolated. The scene where Cobb realizes he is alone, can't stand it, and breaks down, actually shocked me. Cobb really plays this scene well, up to a high pitch without hamming it up. Does anyone else find what follows a little creepy? Fonda waits till the others have left and takes Cobb's coat to him. I know this is supposed to be a gesture of acceptance, and it is, but it also reinforces that now Fonda is the leader of the pack. Cobb is no longer the alpha dog. Like some of the rest of you, I suspect that the defendant is probably guilty and that both sides probably treated this as just another case of minority-on-minority crime. The prosecutor probably urged his witnesses to come across as forcefully as possible, to change "I think I recognized him" to "He was definitely the one." The script makes an honest and important plea for jurors not to be swayed by prejudice and not to arrive at a hasty decision. However, it also lays bare the methods by which Fonda makes his view of reality prevail, and that's what fascinates me most about 12 ANGRY MEN.